The Horoscope Writer by Ash Bishop

Author:Ash Bishop [Bishop, Ash]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: CamCat Publishing

22

Leslie Consorte was missing. When Therese had returned to the station and reported her findings to Captain Grunden, Grunden issued an APB on Leslie’s car, and made a special call to the border patrols at Santa Ynez and Yuma to keep their eyes peeled. Leslie was driving a tan Ford Crown Victoria, a car he’d purchased at a police auction seven years ago.

Grunden had become particularly agitated when Therese brought up the possibility that Leslie’s disappearance was the work of the horoscopes. “That prediction was for a Leo. Consorte’s a Gemini,” Grunden had rationalized. Therese found little solace in that line of reasoning.

To add to her misery, right this minute, Detective Therese Lapeyre was freezing. She was on Dock 44 in the port district of San Diego. The sun was near the horizon, and what little remained was blocked by thirty-foot stacks of metal shipping containers.

Dock 44 was in a peculiar spot. It jutted west partially under the 5 Freeway. SDPD had police stationed in clusters on four points across the dock, including a SWAT team holed up in one of the large metal storage bins. They had coned off the far right lane of the freeway for a mile in either direction and had stopped just short of shutting down the entire freeway, as it was the main travel corridor through all of San Diego and further south into Mexico.

Therese was dressed as a dock worker, leather jacket—complete with extra padding in the shoulders that she did not think she needed—blue jeans, work boots, and a knit beanie. Under her jacket and stained black T-shirt, she wore a standard police-issue Type II bulletproof vest. Despite all those layers, the wind was tearing right through her clothes and chilling her bones. Working helped keep her warm, and once she’d shaken off her lingering thoughts about Consorte, she hefted an empty wooden crate onto a jack-loader and signaled for Special Agent Randy Michaels to haul it away. Instead, Michaels leaned out of the cab and said, “You look cold, Detective. Would you have preferred a position on the periphery?”

“I’m doing fine, Randy.”

“Why did you volunteer to join me as the bait? Don’t get me wrong, it’s heroic. It’s also a job for older, single types. The ones without so many good years ahead of them.”

“Wouldn’t it seem suspicious if all the dock workers were over forty?” Therese countered.

“It’s suspicious to have a woman disguised as a man.” Michaels blinked his eyes. He seemed to immediately regret his choice of words. “Sorry. I shouldn’t be mentioning gender at all, should I? I swear I took those classes. When you’re with the Bureau, there are so many sensitivity classes.”

Therese leveled her gaze at the man on the jack-loader. Randy Michaels was middle-aged. His brown hair was peppered with gray. He had a boyish face, but it was in contrast to the deep battle lines etched into his forehead and temple. “The reason I signed up to be bait is I’m not worried,” Therese said, effortlessly changing the subject.

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